“Haven’t any.” Horton shrugged. “My dad died right after his failure—you knew that?—and mother went in two years, while my kid brother was killed in France. There’s no one left except an uncle in Omaha, and I cut loose from him years ago. It’s too bad mother didn’t live; she’d have liked ’Genie.”
“’Genie?”
“Old man Saulsbury’s daughter; girl in the watch. Her own mother is dead, and she’s staying here on Madison Avenue with some old widow who is long on the family tree business and short on cash. She’s going to fit ’Genie out properly and put her through her paces.”
“You may lose her if she gets into the social game,” Storm remarked absently, his mind intent on his problem. On one thing he was determined; Horton should not leave that door with the money! Yet to kill him here was unthinkable. A phrase which the other had used in telling of his predecessor’s fate returned to Storm like a flash of inspiration: “found in a thicket by the road with his head bashed in”——The Drive! Later it would be deserted enough; but how to get Horton out there——?
“Lose ’Genie?” Horton repeated. “Not a chance! There’s no nonsense about her, I can tell you! She is only doing this to please her daddy, but she’ll never get stung by the society bug. I knew her before the old man made his pile, and it hasn’t changed her a mite. She’d stick to me through thick and thin, but when a fellow has led the free life I have, he isn’t in too much of a hurry to settle down in double harness, even if it is silver mounted.”
“There is no one else?” Storm regarded him quizzically. “For you, I mean? No other girl in the running?”
“No, sir! I never bothered much with them, anyway; been too busy. This Mid-Eastern Consolidated Coal Corporation is the biggest job I’ve had yet, and I’m planning to stick right with them and go on up. They know me, and once I get on the inside——!” Horton paused and reached for the humidor. “I’m eating up your cigars, old scout! Look at that pile of ashes.”
“Help yourself.” Storm tossed the match box across the table. “That’s what they’re here for. Damn the ashes.”
“Well, it’s my last.” Horton glanced at his watch. “Great Scott! Eleven thirty! I ought to be changing at Altoona right now for a little jerkwater road up into the mountains!—Oh, what’s the odds! It’s been worth it, this powwow with you, Norman. I’ll catch the twelve-forty——”
“Why? I thought you were going to stay over night!” stammered his host, aghast at this sudden hitch in his half-formulated plan. “I’m all alone here, as you see, and we can turn in any time you feel like it.”